


erelong

by jubilantly



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, SiH 05 spoilers I guess??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 17:37:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16581011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jubilantly/pseuds/jubilantly
Summary: In which Samothes tries to figure out what to say to Samot.





	erelong

Samothes will have one last conversation with his husband.

Having the mask is an ending, more than anything, a means to say goodbye better than he did the first time around, no matter how much he wishes it could be a new beginning, but he will be content with what he has, and what he has is the opportunity to have one last conversation with Samot.

He can’t decide if he wants to sit down or not, he keeps sitting and standing and pacing and shaking his head at himself, and he is holding the mask and his thumb is moving ceaselessly along its edge.

It’s a very nice mask, it is good work, Samothes should want to laugh at himself for the thought but there it is and he doesn’t feel like laughing at all. It is a very nice mask, and it is an empty copy of a face he knows well, and it was made by and made for and made to… well. It is a connection in many ways.

Samothes paces, slowly, and looks at the mask, and touches, absentmindedly, its cheek.

There has never been a time, before this, before soon, where he talked to Samot imperfectly, distantly -- they were always close, until they were not, and then when they were not they did not talk anymore.

It has been so long. It has been so long, and Samothes misses his husband, and he wants to speak to him and to see him and to touch his hand his cheek his lips, he wants to see if after all this, after dying and after time and after changes necessitated by all that is happening in the world, if after all this he as he has become and Samot however he may have changed can fit together once more, but… Samothes is dead, and he is in Aubade which will be closed off soon, and Samot is neither of these things, and they separated in anger, and there is too much to say and one conversation is so so little.

So so little, but it is more than Samothes could have hoped for, and he is glad for it even as his heart is heavier and heavier.

He keeps pacing for a while, for a long while probably, what is time when you are a god, what is time when you are dead, what is time when you have one last conversation to have with your love and then an eternity without him.

And then he sits down, finally, but he does not put on the mask just yet. He wants to, oh, he wants to, he has never wanted anything more than to see Samot’s face again and hear his voice again, he wants to speak to his husband, simple as that, but he wants to wait just a little, he wants just a few more moments of having this connection and a reason to not yet severe it forever.

As long as he has not yet put on the mask, he has this one last conversation still; when he puts it on, everything will be over once more, and more finally.

He doesn’t even know what he can say.

He can say sorry, now, has moved with time from knowing that it would help to say it, to knowing that he should be sorry, and from there to being sorry as simply and genuinely as one can be sorry; but then, what is a sorry if it is also a goodbye.

The mask looks at him empty-eyed, and he touches the back of his fingers, gently, to its cheekbone, and he turns it around.

If he closes his eyes, even if he doesn’t close his eyes, he can see Samot's face, he can picture it, so dear and so desperate and so disdainful, and he doesn’t know what to say, and he will know even less when he sees Samot’s face as it is instead of as it was, and his throat is closing up.

“I'm sorry for my part in creating this distance between us.”

He knows he needs to say that much.

“I forgive you for yours.”

He knows that, too.

Will he be able to touch Samot, in this brief moment of imperfect connection? They are gods, what does it matter if the mask was intended to allow it, they would find a way, but. Will Samot allow it?

“I miss you. I love you.”

That part is easy. Oh, it may not lead anywhere, it may not be answered in kind, but this part is easy.

“I will not see you again.”

And that part is not.

“I will not see you again, I have no choice in the matter, I'm so sorry, I am so sorry.

I will not see you again, but I had to see you one last time.”

He will never know what to say to make it less painful. He doesn’t have time to figure it out, there is no time to waste if he wants to protect Aubade.

Samothes feels, distantly, how his hand trembles as he shifts his grip on the mask, and he feels the smooth metal and the curves and sharp edges of it, and his finger catches, briefly, on the ribbon threaded through the side, and then he grips the mask tighter and then he lifts it up and then it is in front of his face and then it touches his face and it is smooth there too, but a strange and wrong shape, in the moment it takes for everything to shift.

And then Samothes is someplace else.

A study, because of course it is. A mess, because of course it is, but Samothes’ heart clenches nonetheless at the desperate way everything is strewn about, at the knocked-over goblet, at the way half-light illuminates Samot’s shoulders bent tiredly and his head resting heavy on his hand.

There is a moment before Samot turns around where Samothes tries to find words once more but can’t, and then Samot turns around and gets up off his chair so quick that he stumbles and the chair clatters and papers rush from precarious places on the desk onto the floor.

And then they both stand, frozen.

They stare at each other, and Samothes can barely feel his own breath or his own heart but he can feel Samot’s presence like he hasn’t felt it in too long, he can feel Samot here he can feel Samot near he can feel the entire breathtaking contradiction of his being, and he can see him too, he sees him again finally.

Samot is dressed simpler, now, than he used to dress, in a tunic that looks nearly like the one Samothes himself is wearing, and it's odd, it is laughable and painful, that here at the end of it all they would stand opposite each other looking equals. Except Samothes knows that he has had time to rest, and he can see that Samot has not had that.

There is a tiredness in Samot’s face that Samothes would not have thought possible, and Samothes aches and Samothes cannot look away from the familiar beautiful face grown even more desperate than it was the last time, and Samot stares at him so disbelievingly.

“You are not him? You are you.” A whisper, confused, breaking a little on the last syllable.

Samothes doesn’t know what that means, but he is himself and he is here and Samot is himself and he is here, and Samothes, tentative, takes a step towards his husband, and he still does not know what to say.

In a rush, Samot is in front of him, in a rush in a stumble in a single leap of two hopeful hearts, and Samothes reaches for him and begs the universe to let him have this, to let them have this, and Samot takes Samothes’ hand and twines their fingers like the first time he asked him to dance, and like he never wants to let go again.

There are things to be said, most of them apologies, but Samothes can see Samot’s apology in his eyes and Samot must see the same in his, and his hope and his love and his grief, and there are words Samothes has to say but here is a moment he will never get again, and he will take it before he throws it away.

Samothes will take these few breaths in between reunion and goodbye, and he will not start by hurting both of them, he cannot start by saying any of what he means to say, he can just, he can only, burning out of his throat, fluttering all through his lungs, a breath a sigh an exhalation an exaltation,

“My love.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on twitter @uklan_tel please someone make me finish a fic that isn't sad.


End file.
